So that is Keegan holding Chelsea after her christening; he has the typical big brother look on his face. And in the background we have their cousin Greg, who is one of Keegan's groomsmen, and clearly just enjoying the moment. Ahh, family love :-D
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Awkward Family Photos
Last week I discovered AwkwardFamilyPhotos. com and some of them are pretty hilarious! This past weekend I spent a great deal of time scanning my own/Keegan's awkward family photos for us to use in a slideshow to run at the wedding reception. Well, I guess they aren't all awkward so much as amusing! I especially loved me with the gigantic glasses with the lenses that went down to the middle of my cheeks and the pictures that showed I weighed the same in 8th grade as I do now (no, not joking). But my all time favorite is this one right here:
So that is Keegan holding Chelsea after her christening; he has the typical big brother look on his face. And in the background we have their cousin Greg, who is one of Keegan's groomsmen, and clearly just enjoying the moment. Ahh, family love :-D
So that is Keegan holding Chelsea after her christening; he has the typical big brother look on his face. And in the background we have their cousin Greg, who is one of Keegan's groomsmen, and clearly just enjoying the moment. Ahh, family love :-D
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Lab work! (Finally!)
I'm finally going to do something in the lab! Yipee! I'm going to make myself some microspheres, just to see if I can do it. Of course, I might actually use them for something also eventually, but I want to get my hands dirty and actually make something tangible to show for all my time here. I pretty much read a hell of a lot of papers each day and think about what materials I'd like to use to make microspheres. But for now I'll settle for making microspheres of the wrong materials, just to learn the theory behind making them. So that will start on Sunday/Monday (since it requires some overnight stirring, and I can't be in on tomorrow or Saturday due to wedding planning things). Today I'm going to track down all the stuff I need (after I'm finished reading) to make sure I know where everything is by Sunday/Monday, or I can order things we do not have and then start my work at a later time.
Keegan was sent to Philadelphia last week to help out one of the project managers there, and I'm extremely proud of him! Now he's made himself a hot commodity at two of the company's offices, which provides him with a heightened degree of job security. He met with his boss's boss who told him something about wishing there were 72 of him [Keegan] that all get through the same amount of work as him. He's still been working longish hours, but it's definitely worth it to make good impressions and get the work done well. Thankfully the city of Raleigh approved the continuation of the work on the Lightner emergency response center, which is pretty much the huge project that is keeping the entire company afloat, and guarantees that Keegan will have plenty of work through the end of this year (which will hopefully help the company ride out the economic downturn).
I finally got all of my invitations out- AMAZING- and with stamps to spare! Now I'm going to have to send people all square cards so I can use up the remaining stamps, since they are $0.61 instead of $0.44. And we received our first wedding present yesterday, on the one month marker for the wedding!
On tap for the rest of this week/weekend on the wedding front:
-finish going through all childhood pictures to select some for a slideshow
-scan aforementioned pictures and get them to Sara so she can work on putting them into a nice presentation using all her creative craftiness (before she leaves for Switzerland next week!)
-get copies of baptismal stuff to the church secretary to confirm that I am indeed baptized so we can be set to get married there
-finalize the list of readings for the ceremony and turn that in to the church
-go to the Wake County register of deeds office to obtain our marriage license
-meet with the photographer to go through the flow of the ceremony and reception, as well as talk about who we want to take pictures with, which people don't like each other and won't be in the same pictures, etc
-give last check to photographer
-go to the mall with my bridesmaids to pick out their shoes
-take my sister to try on her dress
-buy a wedding gift for Amy and Matt (which is not related to my wedding, but is still wedding-relating and very exciting! Only 8 days until their wedding!)
And that's just this weekend. Other things that are not related to wedding things that I'm doing this weekend:
-hanging out with Sara before she leaves for the amazing Switzerland trip!
-having dinner with Keegan's family for his twin siblings' 16th birthday
-buying gifts for these siblings
-having dinner with Sarah Braman for her 23rd birthday
Well, it's back to the microsphere fabrication reading!
Keegan was sent to Philadelphia last week to help out one of the project managers there, and I'm extremely proud of him! Now he's made himself a hot commodity at two of the company's offices, which provides him with a heightened degree of job security. He met with his boss's boss who told him something about wishing there were 72 of him [Keegan] that all get through the same amount of work as him. He's still been working longish hours, but it's definitely worth it to make good impressions and get the work done well. Thankfully the city of Raleigh approved the continuation of the work on the Lightner emergency response center, which is pretty much the huge project that is keeping the entire company afloat, and guarantees that Keegan will have plenty of work through the end of this year (which will hopefully help the company ride out the economic downturn).
I finally got all of my invitations out- AMAZING- and with stamps to spare! Now I'm going to have to send people all square cards so I can use up the remaining stamps, since they are $0.61 instead of $0.44. And we received our first wedding present yesterday, on the one month marker for the wedding!
On tap for the rest of this week/weekend on the wedding front:
-finish going through all childhood pictures to select some for a slideshow
-scan aforementioned pictures and get them to Sara so she can work on putting them into a nice presentation using all her creative craftiness (before she leaves for Switzerland next week!)
-get copies of baptismal stuff to the church secretary to confirm that I am indeed baptized so we can be set to get married there
-finalize the list of readings for the ceremony and turn that in to the church
-go to the Wake County register of deeds office to obtain our marriage license
-meet with the photographer to go through the flow of the ceremony and reception, as well as talk about who we want to take pictures with, which people don't like each other and won't be in the same pictures, etc
-give last check to photographer
-go to the mall with my bridesmaids to pick out their shoes
-take my sister to try on her dress
-buy a wedding gift for Amy and Matt (which is not related to my wedding, but is still wedding-relating and very exciting! Only 8 days until their wedding!)
And that's just this weekend. Other things that are not related to wedding things that I'm doing this weekend:
-hanging out with Sara before she leaves for the amazing Switzerland trip!
-having dinner with Keegan's family for his twin siblings' 16th birthday
-buying gifts for these siblings
-having dinner with Sarah Braman for her 23rd birthday
Well, it's back to the microsphere fabrication reading!
Monday, May 11, 2009
Invitations, alterations, and review paper, oh my!
Now we've reached the 40 day marker and things are getting craaaaazy. Tomorrow is my first dress alteration as well as my last birthday as a Welsh :-) Exciting!
This weekend was extremely busy; Monty and I met today to discuss my progress on the review paper and the project I'm thinking of adopting for summer work (which, by the way, is "promising" and "moving in a great direction") so I spent a lot of time reading my paper and other papers to add more background info to my review paper. Friday night Keegan and I went to his family's house for dinner and then out to see the new XMen movie with some of the other BMEs- the movie was pretty entertaining, so I enjoyed it. The next movies on our list to see are Star Trek, Angels and Demons, and the Terminator Salvation movie. I'm also looking forward to seeing the new Pixar movie Up and (naturally) HARRY POTTER!! Before seeing Xmen I hadn't been to a movie since Quantum of Solace in November, so I guess I'm just going to see a year's worth of movies in one month :-)
Saturday was really busy also- I did my usual morning fitness room trip, went grocery shopping, went to Cait's graduation ceremony (so proud!), registered at Crate and Barrel, and went by my family's house to visit with my mom for Mother's Day. Whew! And Sunday was spent finishing the paper. The end of the year is always so hectic... final projects and exams all wrapped together, then all of a sudden it's the middle of May and I don't know how I got there.
Tonight I'm going to address the last of our wedding invitations (I hope) so I can take them by the post office tomorrow on my way to the fitting. I've also called the woman who organizes things at the Fallon Center (where our reception will be) to see about making some changes to the menu and how we want to decorate everything. Keegan's parents have also generously offered to pay for a bartender; even though I don't drink a whole lot, I know there will be a lot of people there who would like a drink, especially after a boring wedding ceremony :-P
On a completely unrelated note, I have set up a lot of shows on the National Geographic Channel to record lately, and there was a really interesting one about King Tutankhamun that further solidfied my desire to go to Egypt. I was even looking around on hotels.com and Expedia to get pricing information. But I guess I'll have to wait awhile after the wedding for my funds to restabilize before I go planning any huge vacations... I also recorded some episodes of a show called Life After People, but I haven't had the chance to watch any of them yet.
I've recently been thinking a lot about whether or not I want to start attending Keegan's family's church. He never goes to church, but I feel like I should attend a service there at least once before we get married there, since it's sort of a big deal. I also want to be familiar with Father John's style before he performs the wedding. I have no desire to convert to Catholicism, but maybe I could still learn something and hear something new from a Catholic perspective; I've attended some Catholic services before but I always get the "holier than thou" feeling when I'm there. I can't take communion in the service because I'm not Catholic, I get lightheaded from the insanely strong incense wafted everywhere, and I don't appreciate that a lot of the clothing I see on the members of the church cost more than my Duke tuition. But I guess that's a pretty cynical way of looking at things. I really do like Father John though, he's extremely friendly and (appears to) live modestly. And he doesn't make me feel guilty about not wanting to convert. Hmm, that reminds me I have to go and meet with him again... better add that to the list of things I need to set up. Maybe once the wedding is over I'll have more productive things to write about in this blog :-)
This weekend was extremely busy; Monty and I met today to discuss my progress on the review paper and the project I'm thinking of adopting for summer work (which, by the way, is "promising" and "moving in a great direction") so I spent a lot of time reading my paper and other papers to add more background info to my review paper. Friday night Keegan and I went to his family's house for dinner and then out to see the new XMen movie with some of the other BMEs- the movie was pretty entertaining, so I enjoyed it. The next movies on our list to see are Star Trek, Angels and Demons, and the Terminator Salvation movie. I'm also looking forward to seeing the new Pixar movie Up and (naturally) HARRY POTTER!! Before seeing Xmen I hadn't been to a movie since Quantum of Solace in November, so I guess I'm just going to see a year's worth of movies in one month :-)
Saturday was really busy also- I did my usual morning fitness room trip, went grocery shopping, went to Cait's graduation ceremony (so proud!), registered at Crate and Barrel, and went by my family's house to visit with my mom for Mother's Day. Whew! And Sunday was spent finishing the paper. The end of the year is always so hectic... final projects and exams all wrapped together, then all of a sudden it's the middle of May and I don't know how I got there.
Tonight I'm going to address the last of our wedding invitations (I hope) so I can take them by the post office tomorrow on my way to the fitting. I've also called the woman who organizes things at the Fallon Center (where our reception will be) to see about making some changes to the menu and how we want to decorate everything. Keegan's parents have also generously offered to pay for a bartender; even though I don't drink a whole lot, I know there will be a lot of people there who would like a drink, especially after a boring wedding ceremony :-P
On a completely unrelated note, I have set up a lot of shows on the National Geographic Channel to record lately, and there was a really interesting one about King Tutankhamun that further solidfied my desire to go to Egypt. I was even looking around on hotels.com and Expedia to get pricing information. But I guess I'll have to wait awhile after the wedding for my funds to restabilize before I go planning any huge vacations... I also recorded some episodes of a show called Life After People, but I haven't had the chance to watch any of them yet.
I've recently been thinking a lot about whether or not I want to start attending Keegan's family's church. He never goes to church, but I feel like I should attend a service there at least once before we get married there, since it's sort of a big deal. I also want to be familiar with Father John's style before he performs the wedding. I have no desire to convert to Catholicism, but maybe I could still learn something and hear something new from a Catholic perspective; I've attended some Catholic services before but I always get the "holier than thou" feeling when I'm there. I can't take communion in the service because I'm not Catholic, I get lightheaded from the insanely strong incense wafted everywhere, and I don't appreciate that a lot of the clothing I see on the members of the church cost more than my Duke tuition. But I guess that's a pretty cynical way of looking at things. I really do like Father John though, he's extremely friendly and (appears to) live modestly. And he doesn't make me feel guilty about not wanting to convert. Hmm, that reminds me I have to go and meet with him again... better add that to the list of things I need to set up. Maybe once the wedding is over I'll have more productive things to write about in this blog :-)
Friday, May 1, 2009
The final countdown
Well ladies and gentlemen, there are now 50 days remaining until our wedding... oh my goodness.
Other countdowns that are currently under way:
-26 hours until I'm finished with exams
-7 days until I turn the draft of my review in to Monty
-12 days until my 23 birthday (and my first dress alteration)
-13 days until my 3 year anniversary with Keegan
-51 days until we leave for Bermuda!!
Nothing else really new and exciting is going on; wedding things are going to kick into high gear here soon. Dress fittings/alterations, hair stuff, getting favors together, meeting with the priest, organizing a slide show of photos to have running at the reception (which I desperately need to gather to send to Sara!), deciding how to decorate the tables at the reception, etc. I did at least choose my shoes (from Nine West) and when I go to the dress store I'll look at their veils.
Anyway, back to the studying!
Other countdowns that are currently under way:
-26 hours until I'm finished with exams
-7 days until I turn the draft of my review in to Monty
-12 days until my 23 birthday (and my first dress alteration)
-13 days until my 3 year anniversary with Keegan
-51 days until we leave for Bermuda!!
Nothing else really new and exciting is going on; wedding things are going to kick into high gear here soon. Dress fittings/alterations, hair stuff, getting favors together, meeting with the priest, organizing a slide show of photos to have running at the reception (which I desperately need to gather to send to Sara!), deciding how to decorate the tables at the reception, etc. I did at least choose my shoes (from Nine West) and when I go to the dress store I'll look at their veils.
Anyway, back to the studying!
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